Unto Caesar
by jenni3penny
Summary: "But it seems as though the harsher he is with her, the more he curbs her, the more irresistible he becomes - despite the base human instinct that crossly tells her 'do not touch'." Kibbs.
_**'Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,**_
 _ **And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'**_  
 _ **Whoso List to Hunt - Sir Thomas Wyatt**_

* * *

She sometimes feels like an ignorant child when he looks at her. When he pins her with a look that has a tone all of its own – disappointment and frustration and what she can only imagine is probably annoyance. Whenever she reminds him that a protege is not necessarily the same thing as a savant and that human beings (especially those as blissfully hopeful and innocently ignorant as she supposes she can be)... well, human beings fuck up. Even the supposedly adept and responsible ones he picks up off of Air Force One. Let _that_ be a lesson to him...

But when he looks at her that way she is always instantly reminded of Christmas Eve years before, when she'd tucked her nephew's fingers into her hand as he'd strayed near the stove and said

" _Hot._ " with such a hissing stop to her voice that he'd winced her a horrified glance. As though she'd shown the four year old what Armageddon looked like – he'd been wide-eyed mortifed.

(She is, generally, just as mortified whenever she screws up so completely – and especially in front of _him_.)

Her brother's voice had been booming and clear as it had preceded the boy's wailing into the living room an hour later, " _Sit with Aunt Katie._ "

The child had sucked against the minimal burn on his palm while he whimpered on churning tears and then very delicately lifted the wound for her to kiss and fuss over – and she'd been unable to stay sturdy despite the fact she'd warned him away from the touching to begin with. She couldn't say she blamed him for touching things that are, naturally, supposed to be untouchable.

She has one thing in particular that is hot-touch-untouchable to her and she'd still sure as hell reach for it if she thought for one moment he would actually reach back...

So she couldn't be angry then, she couldn't stay stern, not in the face of tears and confusion and betrayal.

But that is not, not at all, Gibbs' problem. He has no issue with staying sometimes critically sharp and reminding her that she wasn't supposed to foul up so entirely in the first place. She was supposed to be better, she was supposed to be his pride and, for fuck's sake, she was supposed to be as invincible as him. She thinks she's probably better at screwing up than DiNozzo in that regard – because maybe she doesn't insert her foot into her mouth quite as often or as deep but... God, when she screws up, she gets the Blue Ribbon.

But it seems as though the harsher he is with her, the more he curbs her, the more irresistible he becomes - despite the base human instinct that crossly tells her ' _do not touch_ '.

* * *

She's made the mistake of opening her mouth and letting words come out – words that she knows will especially interest the medical examiner as he brews his afternoon tea.

She's made the mistake of wondering aloud why Gibbs has become her proverbial Forbidden Fruit.

And it's a mistake because Ducky turns slowly toward her with a sparkle of amusement and a smile that says she's in for a lesson she didn't necessarily ask for...

"Noli me tangere." Ducky's voice has that flouty tone that tends to crop up whenever he's wearing his Professor face, the distant and wistful glancing out into space as he pontificates. "For Caesar's I am."

"You've lost me."

"Touch me not." The medical examiner smiles into the explanation, lets his hand lift between them to hold her attention as he continues."Sir Thomas Wyatt was imprisoned for his love of Anne Boleyn, you know. And, well, we know where she ended up."

"Ducky - "

"Touch me not, for Caesar's I am," he interrupts her quickly and assuredly. "The two of you blame one another for the situation you've put yourselves in. There is no Caesar and you're no queen. Charming as you may be, my dear."

"You're not helping me here, Ducky," Kate offers into his gentleness, matching the softness of his tone with her own.

"He doesn't touch you because you're young and beautiful and he believes you couldn't possibly be interested in an old curmudgeon like him. You're precocious, inquisitive, and you terrify the hell out of him. He's unaccustomed to being terrified by anything – most especially a female." It seems, just by the gently sure tone of his voice, to be an inexhaustible truth. One that makes enough sudden sense that she can't necessarily argue against it. "So he uses his rules to keep you apart."

"The rules part I'll agree with," Kate concedes quietly, shrugs again as Ducky gives her a glance that says she's not any safer from his deductions than Gibbs. "But the last thing Gibbs feels in facing me is terror."

"And you." Right, because he obviously isn't finished on the subject and he also knows that she won't stop him in regards to this subject – not when he's one of the only people she trusts with it. "You don't dare actually investigate whether or not he shares your feelings for him, despite the fact that all you've done in the past year _is_ investigate. Why is that, Caitlin?"

"Because."

Because she has no excuse, not really. Not a good one.

"Because? That's your reasoning?" Ducky seems both bemused and annoyed at once, brushes off her non-argument like she's just being childish. He snorts a dry laugh and heads for his desk, leaving her awkwardly still as he shakes his head. "Strike both precocious _and_ inquisitive."

"Ducky - "

"Caitlin, I wouldn't have begun this discussion with a sonnet if I didn't think that what you're feeling is reciprocated in some way." He turns her a grin that's meant to fix her confusion and, in a small way, it does. Because he smiles so assuredly, so positive that he is right about the both of them. "I'm an old romantic, not a fool."

* * *

She drops her purse to the coffee table in the living room, surprised to feel his presence so close when she'd figured he'd have been self buried in his basement. "We work with strange people, Gibbs."

"I'm not all that normal, Kate."

He certainly isn't his normal self, in any case.

Because she unexpectedly finds him sitting rigidly still in one of his kitchen chairs, legs splayed outstretched even with shoes planted flat to the floor. His legs always look so incredibly long when he lowers his back into a chair with as much weariness as she can see on him, his knees up but lagging as he palms around a cold beer bottle and stares at it. His arm is stretching it out toward the center of the wood and the other palm is relaxed against his thigh and she can't help but feel awkward for disturbing this silence and concerned by how haunted it seems.

"Ducky just gave me a lesson in Latin and poetry." It's compulsory, this need to give him all the scattered up information in her head. Probably mainly because information is usually the thing that's legitimately safely given between the two of them. Or, and likely, because she sometimes can't seem to control a flood of honesty from between her lips in regards to him. Like an idiot child, rambling. "All I asked was a simple question."

But even as she moves closer, leans nearer the table, he's quiet. It's not a negative hush – she's been around Gibbs long enough to know when his silence is an implication to get gone or get bent. He's not necessarily sulking, either. There's a definite thoughtfulness to this quiet, as though he's mulling the minute details of a case, or picking over the remnants of something in his thoughts.

"Yeah?" His head bobs aside to her once but he's still staring at the bottle, his thumb rubbing against condensation as he exhales through his nose.

Had his tone been sharper, she would have taken it as a signal to vacate, and fast.

But it had seemed genuinely interested, despite the fact that he hasn't looked at her yet.

"Yes." Might as well move forward if he isn't going to push her back – not that she completely understands why she's even here – other than the fact that she is distinctly fucking tired of being told not to touch something she aches to reach toward. "I'm sorry, Gibbs."

He finally looks at her expectantly but still doesn't seem much surprised at the apology, the obvious and intentional breaking of his rules. She does so often enough and especially when her own moral compass is in complete contradiction to his ridiculous life strategy. It isn't really a surprise to him and she knows that. He stares up at her with a tight little shrug of the shoulders, blankly innocent and as if to imply that remorse is unnecessary – which seems an exact opposition to the look he'd given her directly after he'd taken a pistol whipped across his face.

The mark is still in the process of blooming, bruising and swelling and gaining strength, Furious red branches above and below his left eye, pinching it shut tighter than the other while deeper colors shadow what's still visible of that beautiful blue. She can see where the skin gave way under the butt of the pistol grip, the tear looking furious and wide and so close to his eyelid that she flinches at how much worse it could have been.

And he cocks his head so he can see more of her with the other eye, letting his shoulders slacken back in his kitchen chair as he scuffs the bottle to the table top with the shrugging. "Sorry for what?"

"Screwing up." She plucks the bottle from his fingers, ignoring his bemused half smirk as she slings it back for a strong swallow, halving what's left before lifting it in a mock toast. "Once again."

` A look as near to sympathetic as Gibbs generally gets flicks between them and he just makes that sidling shrug of his shoulders again. Obstinate and guarded and frustrating man, ever ready to keep every little thing he's thinking so close and tightly locked in his head that she wants to scream.

"You fixed it. Cleaned up your mess," he murmurs with a wave of his fingers, like she's already been absolved.

A selfish trickle of heat rivers down the front of her at that – because even she knows that there are moments wherein he's got a soft spot for her. There are moments when he gives her a gentler leeway than he does others. Not at all often, but some. And those moments mean more to her than she could possibly tell him. Because they imply something special, something specific to and for her. She can't necessarily say what, but at least... at least it means _something_.

Like maybe he even likes her, like she isn't always a grand fucking disappointment to him.

Like... maybe she is as competent as his sometimes ridiculously high expectations imply.

Like... maybe he feels more for her than he generally allows.

"Latin, poetry and Anne Boleyn?" he asks hoarsely, voice rough and head lifted again, shoulders banking back comfortably in a rickety chair.

"Mmmm." Kate hums the noise between them and leans into the space he's opened between them, settles onto the edge of the table beneath his obvious watching and wary scrutiny. She sets the bottle down and relaxes close to his nearest knee and leaning into the curve he makes at the table. For a moment she gets the urge to bolt, scamper for the door, all her skin tight on her as she considers how idiotic a move it may have been. "Sir Thomas - "

"Wyatt," he interrupts with a whisper that has her utterly silenced.

It may have been an excruciatingly stupid move on any other day, any random day between the two of them.

Something about today is different and she assumes it has plenty to do with the fact that she put him smack in the middle of a situation wherein he was forced to somehow save her. Again.

She needs to make this apology to keep them in balance and he understands that, right?

At least, she had assumed that had been the reasoning for the day's difference.

Until he slowly lifts the back of his hand against the stretch of her thigh and just lets all the weight of the day rest onto the hem of her skirt and suddenly tensed muscle.

Wait... how'd he know? Gibbs and poetry? Really? She knows he isn't stupid and she knows there are faceted multitudes to this man but, hell... this is a little too familiar to be a coincidence. Especially to a man who denies the existence of things like coincidence or even kismet so very staunchly that he has to make a grand life rule about it. This is too close to her own recent history to be serendipitous.

"You too? Ducky?" she asks quietly, tipping her head to try and find truth on his face.

"Yeah." And he looks almost chagrined, nearly embarrassed to admit that they probably got the same stern talking to, the same little speech but tailored to the each of them. Ducky is nothing if not consistent in his concern, care, and habit of trying to (not so subtly) smack their heads together. "Me too."

"Gibbs - "

"Everybody screws up," he interrupts into the nerviness of her tone, waves it out from between them with a margin of annoyance before his hand settles against her once again. "I screw up. DiNozzo takes us both outta the running. Ya gotta stop taking it so personally, Kate."

"I disappoint you," she murmurs as she shrugs at him, her glance focused on his fingertips as he teases and fiddles at the hemline of her skirt. She doesn't stop him, instead she presses the pads of her fingers against the back of his hand and pushes downward, sighing into how broad his palm seems when he stretches the flat length of his hand against her thigh and squeezes. "I can tell. I'm not stupid."

"The very last thing you are, Kate," his voice is toned low and quiet and more generous than she expects it to be, even as he huffs a mostly noiseless laugh through his nose, "is a disappointment."

"The way you looked at me - "

"There'd just been a .45 aimed at your head." He's defensive when he looks up suddenly, head swinging back as his shoulders lift and his hand clenches on her skirt before he can tame his reaction. "I couldn't... I may've had a moment, okay? Give a guy a chance to recover before you profile every inch of his expression."

"I can't," she exhales rapidly, maybe more desperately than she wants. "Not with you."

"It wasn't disappointment," he assures her. And she wants to believe it.

"You were angry with me," she argues sadly, feels the despondency clench in her own throat. "You - "

"I was terrified for you," he interrupts, surprising her by how much blue honesty lives in his widened up eyes just before he blinks it away, silently denies its existence. "Looks about the same on a Marine, I guess."

"What'd you say to Ducky that made him - "

"Touch me not." The hushed lull of his voice sounds more than comforting on the poetry. "For Caesar's I am."

Kate frowns over him slightly, fidgets into a shrugging. "There is no Caesar."

"And you're no queen, Agent Todd." He nods as he accepts the words himself – just before he loosely shrugs into a sort of realization and looks back up at her, unguarded. "Oughta be treated like one, though."

She can't handle something so close to a cherished compliment coming from him, not unless he really really means it – not if it may just be a placation. "Executed?"

His eyes both flinch tighter and she draws her hand aside reflexively, focusing instead on the feeling of his fingertips tantalizing from mid thigh to her knee. "You know exactly what I mean, Kate."

Kate swallows as his head drops and his broad shoulders lever from the back of the chair, her hand still awkwardly lifted mid air as he lays his lips trailing behind his fingers. They make a matched pair, one after the other as they travel toward her knee and she can't help but watch the sincerity of the movements. A noise of surprised appreciation breathes off her as he curls long fingers to the underside her knee and leaves his mouth breathing a damp kiss against it. Her empty hand digs into his hair before she really even realizes she's reaching for him, before she can tell herself not to touch, to keep to herself. Before she can stop from stroking her palm down the back of his head and digging her nails rising back up the velvety shortness of his hair.

To be perfectly fair... he'd started it.

Except... she knows she'd started it.

She's still gonna blame him, secretly.

"Gibbs."

His head lifts slowly into the rushed lightness of his name off her lips, keeping his shoulders and upper body lowered even as he raises a bruised glance at her. "Kate?"

"Thinking I wouldn't be attracted to you because of an age difference is - "

"I'm an ass, Kate." He's letting his own self reproach make his voice bitter and brash. "I am a bastard."

She merely shrugs at it, ignores it primarily. "I know that."

"It's not the age, it's the lifestyle," he explains in a way that actually seems sad. "I will never be what you need."

She can't help rolling her eyes despite the fact she knows it annoys the hell out of him. "You never ask me what I need."

His head dips aside and into the stretch of her fingers, his eyes shutting like he has a headache weighing him lower. "Maybe because I already know. Can't give you what you need, Katie."

"Gibbs, someday you're gonna realize," she sighs out a breath between words, "that's because you already have."

His face crumples in disbelief, a stray annoyance marring his already bruised features as he shakes off the statement she's flatly made between the two of them. He doesn't seem to be able to actually argue the idea, though. As though he neither wants it confirmed nor denied, he just wants to avoid the possibility altogether - because it could slaughter his resolve, his responsibility, him in his entirety.

"You can't become what I need when you won't accept that you already are. You never ask me what I need, Gibbs."

There's a bracing reality to her words and she sees him flinch into it as he looks at her with something so close to longing that her lungs bracket still. "Kate - "

"You afraid to hear the answer?" she asks accusingly, forcing air down her throat once again.

He minutely shakes his head and his eyes are proud as he holds the accusatory way she's staring him down.

"I need you." Kate shrugs it between them with both shoulders, hair bouncing darkness around her openly relieved face – even she hadn't thought she'd actually have the balls to say it but it had been there, prying out of her throat finally. "And I'm gonna need you to touch me. Or we're going to actually start to have a problem here."

" _Start_ having a problem?" He snorts and his eyes are hooded, hiding their brightness by the half down turning of his head. "Hon, you've been problematic from the beginning."

A flare of heat spikes between her lungs at the sweetened endearment – and she hates him a little for it. Because he's said it with such honest and cutting sincerity, as though she was made and meant to momentarily be the person he nudged his jaw closer to while murmuring something like 'sweetheart' or 'baby' and how in the hell have they ended up here? Because there are over eighty thousand seconds in a day but only the last thirty have now actually put her in a position wherein she thinks it's okay for him to lean her way and tiredly murmur a term of affectionate endearment. And she doesn't necessarily understand where the change came from, or why it came, but she can't really bring herself to question it either. Not when he's smiling like a shy child and staring at her like he's waiting for her to bite his head off for being a bastard of a chauvinist.

He isn't, though. Not really, not at the moment.

This isn't him asserting control or being macho or overly protective.

This is his concession. His bare adoration and his weakness.

And she still can't seem to wrap her head around the fact that he'd let her have it so easily. That she didn't even really need to fight for it... just... tell him she wanted it.

"Kate?"

"I should be treated like a queen?"

He half grins at her then, like he has every day since they've met (at least once, and always before the sun goes down on their troubles), "That a question or a statement?"

She hadn't realized that she'd phrased it as both at once and she summarily decides to just blame his eyes and their intense prettiness (despite being bloodshot and battered) for the confusion. "Both, I guess."

"Hmm." The nod he gives her is, at once, accepting and a bit smug – as though he knows the answer she's flailing for but doesn't plan to share the knowledge of it with her.

She touches circling around the marring colors on his face, careful not to press too close to the heat of their swelling, sighs hard into how still he is as he watches her make the movements. "What am I gonna do with you, Leroy Jethro Gibbs?"

A huff of stuttered breathing comes from between his lips at the sound of her speaking his name in its entirety and it's a stalled moment before he smiles again, his eyes wincing as the movement reminds the muscles in his face that they've been abused. "How are you at stitches, Your Majesty?"

She feels the grin take over her face before she can stall its arrival. "Fair."

"Do the honors then?"

She touches against his cheek, avoids the damage in favor of being able to touch him at all as she smiles. "I'd love to."


End file.
